by J. N. Chaney
“That doesn’t help, Jex,” Leira snapped back.
“No, it doesn’t. But what will is us going through that gate, finding her, and rescuing her.”
“I—” she started again, then broke off. Dash waited.
“You’re serious?”
“Dead serious.”
“So, what, you’re going to take the whole fleet through that gate after her?”
“No. There wouldn’t be any point to that, anyway. Only our mechs are fast enough to overcome their head start. So it’s just going to be you, me, Conover, and Amy. We’re going to go through that gate, we’re going to retrieve Jexin, and we’re going to kill anything that tries to stop us, Deeper or otherwise.”
“When do we leave?”
Dash turned his gaze to the gate. That raw fury that he’d had to breathe away had been replaced by cold, relentless purpose. He wasn’t really Dash, not anymore. Now, he was the Archetype, an implacable, remorseless machine.
“We go right now.”
They actually didn’t leave immediately. The Herald, along with several other ships, carried reloads for the mechs to replace the ordnance they’d expended. Dash forced himself to wait while the four mechs were bombed back up, which also gave their AIs a chance to do some self-repairs.
Dash watched as maintenance remotes thunked the last missile into the Archetype’s magazine, then retreated back into the Herald’s open cargo bay. He was anxious to get underway. Every minute that passed was another minute Jexin spent in the hands of the Deepers, speeding away to some unknown fate, one that didn’t bear contemplating.
Amy chomped at the bit, too. She’d already taken her mech to the mouth of the gate and waited there, impatiently asking Dash for updates. Conover worked hard to keep her from charging through after the little Kosan who’d become her best friend.
And then there was Leira. She said little, curtly answering questions, but nothing more. Dash’s flat statement, that it was her fault—along with that of the other mech pilots, and especially including him—had had its intended effect. But it also carried a lingering side-effect. She might share the blame but felt her share of it especially keenly. Jexin had been her wing, the two of them fighting as a team. She was, therefore, assigning herself more of the immediate responsibility for how disastrously things had gone. Dash knew she’d be replaying the fight in her mind, if not actually replaying it, and second-guessing every decision, every move she made.
As soon as the missile tubes were locked and loaded, Dash accelerated the Archetype away from the Herald. He faced one of the most difficult leadership challenges of his tenure as Messenger.
Somehow, he had to keep three other people motivated, but also in check, while doing the same for himself.
As Dash approached the gate, Benzel came on the comm.
“Okay, we’re clear on everything at this end, Dash. I’ve let Custodian know what’s going on, and he’s relaying it to Backwater, Jackpot, and the LMC forward base.”
“Roger that.”
Silence lingered. Somehow, Dash knew that Benzel wasn’t finished speaking.
“Dash, did I ever tell you about a fellow named Marcus?” he finally said.
“Don’t think so, no.”
“It was actually the two of us who started up the Gentle Friends. Wei-Ping came along soon after, but Marcus was my—not number two, really. More like my co-number one.”
“Okay.”
“Anyway, about two years after we started up, we attacked what turned out to be a Q-ship, a freighter that ended up being full of mercenaries. What should have been a pretty normal boarding action went bad really fast. We had to pull out. But Marcus didn’t make it.”
Dash waited.
“I wasn’t going to let things stand like that,” Benzel went on. “Marcus wasn’t just my fellow privateer; he was my friend. So, I put together a cutting-out party to try and spring Marcus from the Q-ship before it could make it back to someplace they could hand him over to the commerce authorities.”
“Let me guess. It didn’t work out very well.”
“All I managed to do was lose another three Gentle Friends. Later, we found out Marcus wasn’t even alive. He’d apparently died of his wounds, but they were mercenaries, paid thugs. I always suspected they just killed him since he’d still be worth the bounty.”
“Benzel, I get it. You think this is rash, even reckless.”
“I do. Especially since you don’t even know if Jexin’s still alive.”
“She is.”
“Dash, faith is all very well and good, but—”
“It’s not just faith, Benzel. Yes, she might have been wounded, and yes, she might not have survived. But if she was taken by the Deepers alive, then she’s still that way.”
“How do you know?”
Dash took a breath and eased it out. “Because they’re going to want to learn as much as they can from her.” He didn’t get into any more detail than that. He didn’t have to.
“Dash, you’re risking the Archetype and the other mechs. We lose them, and you, then we’re in trouble.”
“Why did you go back for Marcus?”
A long moment of silence before Benzel finally replied.
“Good luck, Dash. We’ll hold the fort until you get back.”
“Roger that.”
The four mechs raced through the gate like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, every bit as bent on hellfire and destruction as those mythic riders.
They found themselves in yet another place in the Big Black, marked by the white-dwarf corpse of yet another dead star. A squadron of Deeper ships, heavy and light cruisers, immediately moved to intercept them. Dash wanted to turn and face them, and implacably destroy them.
But he bit back his simmering fury and ordered the four of them to press on. They were here to rescue Jexin. Killing Deepers was just a means to that end.
At their full acceleration, the four mechs quickly outpaced the Deepers, who remained doggedly in pursuit anyway. Ahead of them, the white dwarf gleamed a dull, greyish white against the pitch darkness of intergalactic space. The only recognizable objects were the two Magellanic Clouds, and beyond them, the smeared spiral of the Andromeda galaxy. Even more sporadic, diffuse points of light marked other, more distant galaxies of the Virgo Cluster.
But Dash kept his attention fixed on the white dwarf ahead, and the two—no, three planets orbiting it. They were, again, just airless, lifeless rocks frozen to nearly absolute zero. But another object swung in a wide orbit around the dwarf star.
It was an Arkubator.
“That’s our target,” he said over the comm.
Amy and Leira both gave curt acknowledgments, but this time, it was Conover that opened a private channel.
“Dash, we don’t know if Jexin is aboard the Arkubator or not.”
“She is.”
A moment passed before Conover replied. When he finally did, his voice was hard in a way Dash had never heard before.
“I know you’re all about your gut feelings, Dash, but this isn’t the time to let them drive you. We do not know if Jexin is aboard the Arkubator. The Deepers might have translated away with her. We could end up wasting a lot of valuable time chasing something that isn’t there.”
Dash opened his mouth to snap back at Conover but didn’t. Just as his words had burned through Leira’s tsunami of emotions, Conover’s did the same to his. He finally sighed.
“You’re right. So what do you suggest?”
“The Deeper ships didn’t escape through that gate all that long ago. There’s probably still a detectable trail of remnant drive plasma. We can follow that to wherever it leads us, whether it’s that Arkubator, a translation point, or something else.”
Dash had to hand it to Conover. He was almost as close to Jexin as Amy was, and no doubt felt the sting of losing her almost as keenly. But he’d kept his head about him, proposing a rational course of action when Dash was having trouble thinking past his own bitter anger.
>
“That’s a good idea. Let’s do that.”
“Okay, but to do this right, we need to slow down and arrange the mechs to ensure the best possible coverage. The exhaust trail is probably already pretty diffuse. If we were inside the galaxy, where the matter density is higher, we probably wouldn’t be able to distinguish it from the background at all.”
Dash switched back to the general comm.
“Okay, guys, listen up. I am officially handing over command of this little expedition to Conover. From this point on, he’s in charge. What he says we do, we do. Any questions?”
Dash expected objections from one or both of Amy and Leira, but neither did anything but acknowledge it. They knew it was the right decision. Messenger or not, Dash was in much the same dark places that they were. Conover, bless his nerdy, sophisticated mind, was the best one to lead them now.
Dash watched intently as the exhaust trail marking the path of the Deeper ships slowly resolved. It was one of a number of such trails, but it was the most coherent, which meant it was also the most recent. The mechs had to separate into two pairs, flying more than a million klicks apart, to be able to get a sufficiently three-dimensional picture of it and reliably pick the signal out of the background noise.
The trail led directly toward the Arkubator.
“Sorry, Dash, you were right after all,” Conover said over the private channel, his voice glum. “Looks like I was the one to end up wasting time.”
“Don’t be sorry. You cost us, what, twenty minutes? And in return we now have a hard target. You’re no less right than you were before.”
“Thanks, Dash.”
“He admires you a great deal,” Sentinel said.
“Good, because I don’t admire myself very much right now.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve been making mistakes, Sentinel. I got sucked in by the Deepers’ diversionary attack on the Forge, which almost cost us the Second Battle of Backwater. I got sucked in again when the Deepers seemed to be attacking the Kingsport, but were really after their Bishops. That did cost a bunch of lives, when I had to throw the Taffy and her task force right into the jaws of the wolf.”
He blew out an exasperated sigh. And then there’s Jexin getting taken prisoner. I got too complacent about—all of it. We win against the Deepers, again and again, which seems great. Except, if you dig into it, you see that more often than not, it just comes down to dumb luck and the sweat, tears, and blood of a lot of good people.”
“Dash, why did you put Conover in charge of this expedition?”
“Because he’s in the right head space for it. I’m not. All I want to do is kill Deepers.”
“So you recognized your own limitations and took action to address them. In this case, that was to actually step down as leader and name somebody currently more capable in your place.”
“I guess.”
“That was the action of a rational person, Dash. That wasn’t just emotion. You did what needed to be done to ensure the success of the mission. That is leadership, and I’d venture it’s also the reason that Conover—not to mention Leira, Amy, Viktor, Benzel, Wei-Ping, Ragsdale, and all the others—admire you.”
“I appreciate the pep talk, Sentinel, but—”
“You’re forgetting something, Dash. You’re not talking to another person. You’re talking to a machine. I can simulate emotions but, ultimately, they’re just a construct. So this isn’t just a pep talk, as you call it. It is a simple statement of fact. These people admire you and respect you. That obligates you to lead them as best as you can. And recognizing your own shortcomings, limitations, and errors is fundamental to that. And that leaves you with one more question, probably the most important of all.”
“What’s that?”
“You have made bad mistakes, to use your implied words. So, what are you going to do about it?”
Dash flew on in silence for a while, occasionally tweaking the Archetype’s course to keep following the tenuous ghost of the Deepers’ exhaust trail. There was no doubt now. It led straight to the Arkubator.
He glanced at the tactical display and noted that the other three mechs had closed back in. Conover took the lead, and Dash slipped into place behind him. Further back, the squadron of Deeper ships still doggedly pursued them, but they were almost an hour behind now.
“You make good sense, Sentinel. I appreciate that. You’re wrong about one thing, though.”
“I am? About what?”
“You’re not just a machine, and your emotions aren’t just a construct. Not any more than I am, anyway. The only difference is that my machinery is squishy goo, while yours is circuits and processors.”
“Interesting. You may have a point.”
For the first time in what felt like a long while, Dash smiled.
“Face it, Sentinel. Like it or not, you’re becoming more human all the time.”
“As I’ve said before, there’s no need to get insulting.”
Dash’s smile became a laugh, which washed away at least some of the darkness. It left him staring at the Arkubator, now looming ahead.
“Hang on a little longer, Jex,” he muttered. “The cavalry’s almost there.”
11
Conover led the mechs onto an arcing trajectory, one that would minimize the time it took for them to intersect the orbit of the Arkubator. Leira immediately came on the comm.
“Conover, what do you want us to do? Are we just going to charge straight in, a head-on frontal assault?”
“That’s the plan, yeah.”
“Um. Don’t you think that’s a little rash? Shouldn’t we try something at least half-assed subtle?”
“No, because that’s exactly what the Deepers will expect us to do.”
Dash had been starting to wonder the same thing Leira had, but Conover’s confident answers intrigued him. “Interesting. Care to explain?”
“We know that the Deepers are naturally deceptive. They keep trying to pull bait-and-switch tactics on us, and they use diversions—all of their plans seem to involve layers of intent, some true, some fake. Sentient beings tend to assume, deep down, that everyone thinks the same way they do, but it’s the only way they can see the universe.”
“Huh. So you think the Deepers are going to be ready for us to do something subtle and cunning so that when we just charge in headlong, it’ll take them by surprise?”
“Exactly. You notice that the ships that brought Jexin here aren’t anywhere to be seen. I think they’re lurking on the far side of that white dwarf where we can’t detect them. That positions them to move to block anything we try. But a charge straight in, toward this side of the white dwarf, gives them the greatest distance to travel to get to us.”
“Couldn’t we track them by their exhaust and be sure?” Leira asked.
“No. This close to the white dwarf, there’s too much background noise.”
“Maybe they just translated away,” Amy said.
“Then we’d see more recent exhaust trails leading us to their translation point. Remember, this star might be small, but it’s still massive and has a big gravity well.”
They flew on for a few more moments. Dash watched as the range ticked down on the tactical display. They’d be in maximum effective range of their missiles in less than five minutes, and the dark-lances just a few minutes after that. But before battle was joined, there was one more point Dash felt they needed to address, the red giant in the room. Part of it was practical, but part of it was just something they had to face.
“Conover, how do we even know Jexin’s still alive?”
The confidence in Conover’s voice slipped a bit. “The same way we’re going to find her aboard that Arkubator. We’re going to link the mechs to her Meld.”
Dash was hit with a surge of both chagrin and pride. Chagrin because he hadn’t thought of that, emphasizing just how much the emotional side of the situation had preoccupied him. And pride because Conover had thought of it.
&n
bsp; It was still far from certain, of course, much less anywhere near perfect. They might try to link to her Meld and fail. Did that mean she was dead? Or that the Deepers had somehow managed to block her from the Meld? There’d be no way to know, and then they’d still face the prospect of either trying to find her aboard the gargantuan Arkubator, while Deeper forces closed in, or giving up entirely and retreating.
That was absolutely the last thing Dash wanted to do. But, if it came down to a choice between the four mechs and their pilots on the one hand, and Jexin on the other—
He sighed an angry sigh. If it came down to that, he’d be the one to make the choice. It was one decision he couldn’t, wouldn’t force on Conover. It was a decision that could only be made by the Messenger.
“We should be entering normal maximum link range for the Meld in thirty seconds,” Sentinel said.
Dash grunted in understanding. In half a minute, he might have to reassume command and order a withdrawal. They just didn’t have the time to search the Arkubator because Deeper forces were starting to pile up. Not only were the ships that brought Jexin here probably sitting on the far side of the white dwarf, but they still had a flotilla of Deeper ships about an hour behind them. Moreover, they’d detected a third group of ships, larger than the other two combined, that had just translated into the system and were about three hours away.
Three hours sounded like a lot, but eyeing the massive bulk of the Arkubator, it suddenly seemed to dwindle to no time at all—
“I’ve connected to Jexin’s Meld,” Sentinel announced.
“Really?”
“There are times for levity and kidding around, but I don’t think this is one of them.”
“Fair point. Sorry, Sentinel. I’m just—”